Steve Jobs gets his final wish, companies appear ready to fight to the death in court

Apple, Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd.'s (KSC:005930) have made it clear that they're over cooperating and are gearing up for total war.

I. Samsung and Apple's Settlement Talks Collapse

According to a report by The Korea Times, the phone industry's two largest players, and two of the world's largest intellectual property owners, walked away from the settlement table despite the efforts of Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero to encourage their chief executives to work out a compromise. With settlement talks failed the "nuclear war" will begin with Apple's trial, which is scheduled for July 30.

For Apple and Samsung the cost of battle may be enormous. Both companies could see their products banned, at least temporarily in certain regions. Samsung may be forced to abandon billions in chipmaking revenue it takes in from Apple on a yearly basis.

Whoever wins in Samsung and Apple's full-blown court war could have a monopoly on the mobile market. [Image Source: The Telegraph]

But despite the seemingly promising signs early this month of a bilateral agreement to cut the number of patents asserted in the companies' lawsuits against each other, the pair could not reach a cross-licensing agreement, as both handset makers believed the other should be paying it licensing fees.

With Apple scooping up large LCD screens for its iPhone 5 (Samsung is the world's largest display manufacturer), the two companies' mutual business has reportedly ballooned to $12B USD for 2012 (up from $8B USD in 2011), even as the pair's public relationship has appeared to deteriorate drastically.

II. Steve Jobs Gets His Wish -- Full Blown "Nuclear" War With Samsung

But ultimately the two companies' leadership seem to believe they stand more to gain by destroying each other, versus working together.

Both companies control close to two-thirds of sales and 99 percent of mobile profits, and their cases are built on questionable legal foundations from a technical perspective. Samsung is suing Apple mostly based on wireless standards patents. But Samsung should be obligated to license those patents to Apple under the "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) rules that govern standards patents.

But Apple's case becomes much more tenuous when you consider that Samsung’s newer handsets bear far less similarity in case appearance or GUI to Apple's new handsets.

Still patent disputes are often less about technical merits and more about the persuasive power of a company's pricey legal team. In that case, “Apple v. Samsung” will be fought by lawyers when it goes to trial this summer in U.S. federal court.

But one thing is certain; the collapse of settlement talks would have greatly pleased the late Apple founder Steve P. Jobs, even if his company ends up losing this war. He vowed near his time of death to send Apple into full war mode and destroy Android at any cost -- or perish trying.

Steven P. Jobs' dying wish of "thermonuclear war" with Android has been fulfilled.

He commented, "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."